Brie-stuffed Burgers and Quenelles

Happy 5th of July everybody! I hope you all had a ball of an Independence Day yesterday! Good times here at food flavor fascination headquarters too! Did some fun cooking in our soon-to-be vacated apartment. We are in the process of moving closer to my husband’s work. Yesterday he made some great burgers, probably the best burger I have had in a long time. One of his specialties is the cheese-stuffed burger. He has made some with cheddar as well as slider-sized ones in the past. This time it was brie’s turn to be stuffing. It’s one of our favorite cheeses. Sometimes we sneak a small piece to give to the dogs 🙂

Lo! A 4th of July dessert quenelle! Mascarpone quenelles with Ranier cherries and blueberry sauce. I had a funny dream the other day. I was dreaming of quenelles for some reason. I haven’t thought of the quenelle shape for a while, but maybe in my subconscious it was time to resurface in my life perhaps. Funny how you can remember things 😀

We had some veg skewers as well. It was a nice side for the brie burger.  Something fun to eat and not so heavy.

Photo credit: thechew.com

The pictures I took of the inside of the burger were blurry, but it is very very similar to the Batali’s bleu-cheese stuffed burger. My husband also makes it in a similar way, except we didn’t season the meat. Since the cheese has some salt, we didn’t want to overdo it. We also wanted the pure flavor of the beef and brie together. You could season it with anything you like if you wish. Even though we used good quality very lean beef (96/4), it turned out juicy. Amazing. I think it was the cheese and making thick patties that helped. To see how to make a cheese-stuffed burger, check out Batali’s video below:

We used a ciabatta bun and topped our brie burgers with thinly sliced red onion, sautéed cremini & shiitake mushrooms, and bacon! Tastes out of this world! Great with steak sauce (such as A1) as well!

For the dessert, I had to use two of my favorite summertime fruits:  blueberries and Ranier cherries.

Pretty fuss-free dessert. The hardest thing is making the blueberry sauce, but it’s still very easy. This recipe utilizes a good-quality jam to sweeten and thicken the fresh berries without adding any extra sugar, though you may have to for your desired point of sweetness. You can always use your favorite berry sauce recipe instead. For this recipe, in a saucepan, I just mixed together 1/2 cup of fresh blueberries, 1/2 cup blueberry jam, juice of 1/2 a lemon, pinch of lemon zest (optional), pinch of salt, pinch of cinnamon, and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. I let it come to a boil while stirring periodically and let it cook for about 10-15 minutes until the berries start to burst. Carefully pour it in a glass jar and let it cool at room temperature. You could use your favorite blueberry jam (maybe homemade from a friend?). I used a brand that didn’t have any fillers or ingredients that I wasn’t comfortable with, such as high fructose corn syrup, LOL.

When ready for dessert, pit the cherries and cut in half (Food52 has a trick for pitting cherries without a pitter). Place some blueberry sauce on a plate and get your mascarpone. Shape into the football-esque quenelles. Top with the cherries and a bit more sauce. My football shapes were a bit rustic than I was hoping for, but they turned out okay. You could also sweeten the mascarpone and/or whip it with something like goat cheese or cream cheese and even melted chocolate. Here’s a video on quenelle shape:

I used two spoons submerged in hot water before I started shaping. There’s a one hand method too.

Mmmm… = mascarpone and fruit + veggies+ big burger

We hope you had a good time celebrating!

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